March 15, 2016 – This week our speaker was State Representative Jenny Horne who is running for Congress and who came into national attention this past summer when she made an impassioned speech before the South Carolina House of Representatives imploring her colleagues to remove the Confederate Flag from the Statehouse. Representative Horne is a graduate of the University of South Carolina where she obtained her undergraduate education as well as her law degree in 1997. She and her husband and children live in Summerville and she is a fellow Rotarian, having been named Rookie of the Year in 2006 in the Summerville Oakbrook Breakfast Rotary Club. Representative Horne has been named Legislator of the Year by the YMCA, the Charleston Trident Home Builders Association and the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce. She was voted one of the fifty greatest influencers of government in 2015.
Representative Horne said that when she made her speech in favor of removing the flag, she was simply “doing the right thing.” She believes that if more public officials would follow Rotary’s Four Way Test our state and our country would be a lot better off.
No one expected the fight to remove the Confederate Flag would be as heated as it was in the SC House – the legislation had passed the Senate easily. But by the time the bill hit the floor of the House for debate sixty proposed amendments had been filed. The debate did not end until 1:15 in the morning. The bill passed by only one vote. When Representative Horne stepped up to the microphone to she had no idea what she would say. Her speech truly came from her heart, because when she finished, she truly did not recall what she had said and had to review tapes of the moment to know what words she had spoken. It was the floor fight for the bill and the outpouring of support and thanks she received which convinced Representative Horne to run for U. S. Congress.
Friends and relatives of Representative Horne heard news coverage regarding her speech from as far away as Europe, but it was one letter from Indiana which truly touched her. Dr. Martha Harris is a life-long educator and a 79-year-old black woman. Dr. Harris was so moved by Representative Horne’s speech that she felt compelled to write her, even though she did not expect Representative Horne ever to seek the letter she penned. When Representative Horne read Dr. Harris’ letter she could not hold back the tears. Here was a woman whose grandparents were slaves in North Carolina thanking Representative Horne for helping remove a symbol which had haunted her family all her life. Representative Horne just had to speak to Dr. Harris and called her, but at first Dr. Harris did not believe it was really Representative Horne. Once they connected, however, their relationship was off to the races. Dr. Harris relayed to Representative Horne that the fact that a young white woman would do what she did gave her faith when even in today’s Indiana Jim Crow is still alive. Dr. Harris called Representative Horne her “she-ro,” but Representative Horne’s words gave away her admiration for Dr. Harris. Representative Horne was taken by the book Dr. Harris wrote about her family and the struggles of a black family in the South and beyond. These two women from worlds apart finally had a chance to meet when Representative Horne was invited to Illinois.
Representative Horne is proud of the lesson South Carolina gave the nation in the aftermath of the Mother Emmanuel AME Church shooting. She says we showed the world that in the darkness of tragedy a truly compassionate community can be unified in the light of forgiveness and healing.
— Alex Dallis, Keyway Committee